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Another Outpost Of Freedom Is In Danger Of Going Dark


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More on the actual movement

 

 

 ‘Sing Hallelujah to the Lord’ has become the unofficial anthem of the anti-extradition protest movement: The presence of Christian groups have made protests look a lot less like the “organized riots” the government said it had to crack down on to bring back law and order.

 

 

A friend on Facebook suggests that the Chinese government may have backed off for fear of empowering the churches. It occurs to me that while there are many more communists than Christians in China, there are probably more believing Christians than believing communists.

 

It’s also the case that — as with the Tea Party — the powers that be are more frightened by bourgeois revolutionary movements than by those of the extreme left or right. And, like the Tea Party, the Hong Kong protesters leave things cleaner than they found them. You can see why the authorities are worried. What if they did that to government? Same worries that united the GOP and Dem establishments — and the press — against the Tea Party here.

 

by Glenn Reynolds

 

 

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HONG KONG SEA PARTS; MOSES UNAVAILABLE FOR COMMENT:

 

World attention has been garnered by those massive protests in Hong Kong of an extradition bill that would result in residents accused of crimes being shipped to mainland China for trial.

 

A major factor in the protests is Christianity, thanks to both Catholic and Protestant groups, so much so that, as HillFaith points out, even the New York Times has noticed. Be advised, Beijing: The world is watching. And a lot of us remember this.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 
 
 
 
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2 minutes ago, B-Man said:

HONG KONG SEA PARTS; MOSES UNAVAILABLE FOR COMMENT:

 

World attention has been garnered by those massive protests in Hong Kong of an extradition bill that would result in residents accused of crimes being shipped to mainland China for trial.

 

A major factor in the protests is Christianity, thanks to both Catholic and Protestant groups, so much so that, as HillFaith points out, even the New York Times has noticed. Be advised, Beijing: The world is watching. And a lot of us remember this.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 
 
 
 

God Bless you B-Man! 

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  • 1 month later...

 

 

MICHAEL YON IS REPORTING FROM HONG KONG, and reports that he expects violence.

 

 

 

 

 

WHY POSTCOLONIAL THEORY IS NOT HELPING HONG KONG:

Over recent weeks, political turmoil raged in the form of mass demonstrations that saw 1 in 7 Hong Kong residents take to the streets to protest an extradition bill that would have allowed alleged suspects to be deported to stand trial in Mainland China, where the legal system is subject to the arbitrariness and discretion of the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP). The fear that any dissident could be targeted isn’t unfounded as stories about billionaires and booksellers being kidnapped by Beijing operatives, only to be prosecuted in show trials on the Mainland and in some cases even tortured in jail, are well known. The extradition bill left almost no room for doubt about China’s ambitions to further override the civil rights guaranteed to the people of Hong Kong by the Sino-British Joint Declaration and renege on the agreed-upon “One Country, Two Systems” framework.

 

Elsewhere, Union Jack flags were handed out and flown in the streets. As photographs of these flag-bearing protesters, many of whom cut across demographic lines, began making the rounds on social media, two things became apparent: a) the uneasy reluctance of mainstream Western media to conduct any sort of meaningful analysis of these scenes and b) the ready willingness of some quarters of Twitter to engage in vitriolic attacks of the Hong Kong protesters, accusing them of being complicit in colonialism.

 

For those who embrace the ideological frameworks of various forms of “Social Justice” Theory including postcolonialism, decolonialism, critical race theory and intersectional feminism, seeing the Asian inhabitants of a former colony raise its colonial flag simply does not compute. Within this ideological conception of the world there is a very simple understanding of power dynamics in which oppression must always come from people seen as having dominant identities – white, male, western, heterosexual, cisgender, ablebodied and thin – and be inflicted upon those seen as having marginalized identities – people of color, colonized or indigenous people, women, LGBT, disabled and fat people.  When all of these elements are considered together, we get the framework of ‘intersectionality’ and it is through the language and activism of intersectional scholars and activists that most people encounter these ideas.

 

Eastern people who complicate the narrative of Western oppressor and Eastern Oppressed are understood to be speaking into and perpetuating oppressive discourses of colonial power which apply much more broadly than their own situation. From this perspective, by aligning themselves symbolically with the flag or philosophically with the ideas wrought by colonial legacy, the protesters were understood to completely invalidate the legitimacy of their liberation movement. Other criticisms reserved for the protesters include rebukes for lacking sensitivity and solidarity toward other countries with victims of colonialism. The journalist Ben Norton went so far as to say that the British flag was a symbol of “genocide, murder, racism, oppression and robbery,” and that the “pro-democracy” activists in Hong Kong were in effect, pro-colonialist groups, funded and backed by the “Western NGO-Industrial Complex.”

 

This argument perfectly exemplifies how one’s basic reasoning and moral calculus can get muddled when steeped too heavily in this kind of postcolonial theory.

 

 

Read the whole thing.

 
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POLICE IN HONG KONG FIRE TEAR GAS AS DEMONSTRATORS RALLY IN RESPONSE TO ATTACK:

Protesters in Hong Kong defied orders to not demonstrate on Saturday, gathering to denounce the police and government in an area where pro-democracy activists were attacked last weekend.

 

Protesters swarmed a major road in the district of Yuen Long clutching umbrellas to shield themselves from police cameras and tear gas that was later used against them at various sites along the route of their march.

 

The rally stemmed from an attack last Sunday at a train station in Yuen Long that left dozens of locals and pro-democracy activists wounded. The masked assailants, who wore white shirts and carried clubs, are suspected of having ties to organized crime groups known as triads.

 

Michael Yon, who is in Hong Kong and has been all over this story, emailed us the following videos. Check his Facebook page for updates.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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THE ACTUAL #RESISTANCE: “Be Water!”: seven tactics that are winning Hong Kong’s democracy revolution: The strategies of Hong Kong protesters, honed through weekly clashes with police, offer a masterclass to activists worldwide. 

 

The Chinese government has considerable expertise in oppressing and intimidating its own citizens, but its own citizens have never lived under freedom. Hong Kongers have, and thus have a different psychology. What the Chinese government needs to worry about is that that psychology might spread.

 

 

 

UPDATE: From the comments: “Fortunately for China they have an ally in Google, which will help China do their best to keep as much of this hidden as possible from people in China.”

 
 
 
 
 
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An organization called the Civil Human Rights Front that is affiliated with all of Hong Kong’s democratic camps, including dozens of political parties and nongovernmental organizations, has pulled together themassive marches that have involved up to two million people at a time. But groups of “front line” protestors have adopted tactics and strategies of their own to express their dissent in ways that resemble guerrilla warfare rather than planned rallies.

The overarching philosophy behind blackshirt actions is “Be Water,” two words lifted from Bruce Lee’s idea of how to overcome what may seem like insurmountable fear: “Empty your mind, be formless, shapeless, like water . . . Water can flow or it can crash. Be water, my friend.”

 

In most cases, the presence was meant to be temporary, with retreats to new locations determined by a flow of information about police movements posted on an online forum called LIHKG or communicated via messaging apps. 

The idea is to force the police to keep up with mobile groups of protestors that aren’t weighed down by their gear, sapping the security forces’ energy and morale through repetitive motions—and to minimize the number of arrests that are made on any given day. The police have taken 568 people, aged between 13 and 76, into custody since June 9. Among them, 148 were arrested on Monday.

Blackshirts constantly heckle police officers, calling them corrupt, or labeling them as dogs or affiliated with triad gangs. In return, the police berate protestors for being “useless” and call them trash and cockroaches, presumably because they wear dark clothing and scurry in swarms. 

The Hong Kong Police Force currently faces massive disapproval and opposition from the public. In just the past few days, they have mistakenly arrested foreign nationals who were not involved with the protests (ignoring explanations made in English), released tear gas that choked the elderly in their homes, forced their way into residential compounds, attacked folks who just happened to be out—even when their commanding officer was issuing orders to retreat. 

Yet the police were conspicuously absent whenever groups of armed men in white shirts showed up. On Monday, one crew whacked protestors with bamboo poles; 20 kilometers away, another gang armed with blades and bats was out for blood, slashing and striking people as they charged past.

 

 

https://www.thedailybeast.com/hong-kong-protesters-inspired-by-the-late-great-martial-artist-bruce-lee-stun-beijing?ref=home

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